One defendant, yet three sides to Rod Blagojevich

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's first corruption trial ended in August 2010, with the jury deadlocking on 23 of 24 counts. He was convicted of one count, lying to the FBI. He was found guilty of 17 of the 20 counts in his retrial, including allegations he tried to sell President Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.

Bob Secter and Jeff Coen, Tribune reporters

Rod Blagojevich fancies himself a student of history, one reason he argued at his corruption retrial last week that efforts to leverage a U.S. Senate vacancy into a Cabinet post or other influential job for him were part of a grand tradition in American politics.

Even Abraham Lincoln dabbled in such horse trading, the former governor said, noting how the Illinoisan secured the 1860 Republican presidential nomination with a deal that made Pennsylvania Sen. Simon Cameron his secretary of war.

Blagojevich's narrative omitted the end of the story, however. Lincoln quickly dumped Cameron amid complaints of corruption so blatant that one congressman said the Cabinet official might even steal a red-hot stove.

Jurors so far have been exposed to three faces of Blagojevich during the trial in which he stands accused of a variety of shakedowns, including an alleged attempt to benefit personally from his power to pick a Senate replacement for President Barack Obama after the 2008 election.

There is the profane and often manic-sounding plotter heard on government wiretaps. Prosecutors contend he was spinning a variety of improper schemes to try to fatten his campaign coffers or land an influential and lucrative new job.

There is the sincere, humble and thoughtful visionary, victimized by political enemies and betrayed by his friends, whom his lawyers sought to bring out in five days of gentle questioning. He talked of everything from his Little League batting average to his onetime love of polyester fashion to his abiding disdain for IllinoisHouse Speaker Michael Madigan.

And finally there is the evasive and shifty quibbler who wallows in moral relativism, a caricature brought out in just one hour of a blistering cross-examination by Assistant U.S Attorney Reid Schar that will resume on Monday.

Seeking to portray Blagojevich as a chronic liar, Schar asked him at one point whether he planted false stories in the media as a matter of political strategy. Blagojevich, who had been recorded doing just that, tried to filibuster but finally answered this way: "Politics is a difficult business. It's not all one thing or all the other."

The dynamic between Blagojevich and Schar was not just verbally jarring but visually as well: the tall, angular and bald prosecutor firing accusatory questions at the former governor with hair far more lush than that of many teens.

As governor, Blagojevich was a master of retail politics — in public glib, humorous, self-effacing and possessed with a memory for facts and names that made it easy to connect one on one with voters. And before Schar launched into his offensive, Blagojevich summoned all of those faculties as he sought to win over the jury with charm.

Skilled at public speaking, he looked directly at the jury box to his right while answering questions from his lawyer to his left, more than once interrupting an answer to say, "Bless you" to a juror who had sneezed.

He was exceedingly polite, apologizing profusely for his frequent profanity on wiretaps and lampooning himself as acting like a "jerk" and a "6-year-old." On more than one occasion when prosecutors complained he was rambling, Blagojevich agreed.

"You're right, you're right," he said.

And he volunteered that it was wrong of him as governor to have aides research jobs he might try to ask for as the price for acceding to Obama's wishes on the Senate pick.

That said, Blagojevich often chafed under court rulings designed to keep him from making extraneous remarks designed to play to the sympathies of jurors.

The charges against him include an alleged attempt to shake down the CEO of Children's Memorial Hospital, and Blagojevich repeatedly tried to squirt in a comment about how the hospital years ago had cared for a relative of his who eventually died of cancer as an adolescent. Despite repeated objections from prosecutors and warnings from U.S. District Judge James Zagel, Blagojevich eventually managed to tell enough of the story to make the point.

He also tried on numerous occasions to boast about his strong advocacy for health care expansion, infrastructure spending and preventing tax hikes. In the same vein, he displayed a fixation with Madigan, time and time again portraying the House speaker as an obstacle to progress in the state.

Prosecutors contend Blagojevich was angling to install U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Senate post in exchange for $1.5 million in donations from Jackson supporters. But Blagojevich insisted he was aiming to give the seat to Madigan's daughter Lisa Madigan as part of a grand political deal to get the speaker to stop blocking the governor's legislative agenda.

As Blagojevich explained it, his legal woes stem from a fervent desire to "do good things for the people," leaving the suggestion that Madigan was an impediment out to do bad things.

From the moment of his arrest in late 2008, Blagojevich has insisted that he ached to get on the witness stand and tell his side of the story. Ever the politician, even in impeachment, he clearly enjoyed being able to talk and talk and talk before a captive audience — at least while his attorney was doing the questioning.

Blagojevich was relaxed and joking on the stand and off, even managing to make fun of his legal plight.

An Elvis Presley fanatic, Blagojevich launched into a debate with reporters about Elvis movies during a brief recess in his testimony, and he insisted "Viva Las Vegas" was tops.

But he said it would be far tougher to choose his favorite Elvis song. "I'll tell you my least favorite," he offered.